


Flashing Lights

by ChokolatteJedi



Category: Who Killed Amanda Palmer - Fandom
Genre: Canon - Music, F/M, Late at Night, Yuletide, Yuletide 2009
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 03:39:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChokolatteJedi/pseuds/ChokolatteJedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She watches the flashing lights illuminate her life</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flashing Lights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [knitmeapony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knitmeapony/gifts).



> Thanks so much to my beta, DragoJustine!

Lying in her bed, she watches the shifting light on her wall, the play of oranges and whites through the blinds across the posters and stains. There is an occasional flicker on the ceiling above her, but she refuses to look up, to see that poster -- to remember that concert -- remember his words…

The window is ajar - it always has to be because the heater only has two settings: _off_ and _pits of hell_. The city is never silent, but three AM is the closest it gets. The bars have been closed for an hour, so most of the drunks are home by now, and the early commuters won't be up for another hour or so. The only ones awake are the ones like her. Sufferers of insomnia, sickness, cruelty, and the occasional savior with flashing lights are the only ones roaming at this O'clock.

It is both her favorite time of night and the one she dreads the most, the time when the loudest sounds are the words in her own head.

Tonight, most of those words are his, though a few are hers.

She still can't quite believe that he said what he did, that he decided something so large without her consent at all. Feminist complaints aside, she honestly did think that he was different. Of course, if she had a dollar for every time she heard some heartsick friend say the same thing while she looked on scornfully, she could afford to move to an apartment that wasn't as dilapidated as this one.

Sirens wail outside, breaking through the pseudo-silence, and she feels strong enough to prop herself up on one elbow and peek through the dusty taupe blinds. There's a fire somewhere nearby, if the glow on the horizon is anything to go on, but she doesn't have enough energy to investigate the view from her other windows.

She lies down on her back again, and without her consent, one hand strays to her stomach.

She doesn't care what he said, she tells herself over again. She doesn't care if the words hurt, because she's spent so many years being hurt that she honestly can't remember a person who treated her otherwise.

But she couldn't convince herself that she loved him enough to lose her senses to him. She couldn't just give in.

Lights flash through the window again, red and blue mixing with the usual white and orange. A brighter reflection within her apartment catches her eye and she looks closer. The cheap silver picture frame on her dresser, the only one she hasn't turned face-down, winks in the light as though it's mocking her.

She usually finds comfort in the fake smile of the black and white girl who came in the frame, but tonight even that comfort is hollow. A reminder that there is no one else in her life that she cares enough about to frame.

The sirens cut off, probably in deference to the locals who are still sleeping -- In the absence of sirens down the block, she can faintly hear another set, across town, rushing off to save someone else.

_Someone worthy of saving._

No. She will not allow him to influence her thoughts any longer. She is free of him, independent, and solo. She won't play out a romantic tragedy for his sake, even if he is quite a few steps above any of the other men in her neighborhood.

But perhaps that's her problem - he's too sane for someone like her. So sane that being around her brokenness slowly killed him. She's seen it in her family, the way that her-

No.

No. No. No. Shut up self.

The orders are useless, but she gives them anyways, out of habit.

She will not think about them. She will not think of the way that the simple functions of life like sickness and death became 'tactics' in a private war. She will not become her mother to his _father_. No, she is the sane one, perhaps the only sane person she knows.

She rolls over and looks at the nightstand. It's not the kind of nightstand that you see in the magazines they sell at the grocery check out, but it's the kind that you see in neighborhoods like hers. She thinks the crate held fruit of some kind once, but not one that would trigger her allergies. It could have been anything, though, for all she knows, because the name is completely worn off and in fact it came with the apartment.

She remembers being so grateful to see that some furnishings had been left behind that she completely ignored his comments about what kind of sick things might have been done to them before they entered her possession.

But inside, she always thought: _what if you knew what kinds of sick things had happened to me before I came into your possession?_

But that would imply that he had ownership over her, and that just wouldn't do. Her friends would love to get a comment like that on her; then they could throw years of good advice back in her face because of a dubious comparison.

It disturbed her, though, that he felt the need to plot out her entire background with the pieces that he liked, the way he plotted out their entire future together. She wasn't even sure if she would keep her tongue in cheek in hand enough to keep her job every day, and he was picking out plots.

He could never know the irony of his choice in which of the many local yards he wanted to spend his eternity in. But she could never stay there with him, and come to think of it, she wasn't sure she could stay in any of the others with him. That kind of permanence was terrifying to a girl with her kinds of… well… they were genetic, probably…

For lack of a better word.

The sirens picked up again, accompanied by more flashing lights, and her tiny apartment began to take on the air of a discotheque. The frame was reflecting again, and the white letter on her nightstand took on a rosy hue.

Test results; even when they aren't technically, they always will be in reality. Confirmation or contradiction of her current predicament. Accident.

Another picture turned face down. Another half empty glass of water. Another pill bottle.

And flashing lights illuminate them all.


End file.
